"I predict that adding weight to a Hot Wheels car will make it go faster because gravity pulls heavier objects with more force down the ramp."
Every experiment follows a forensic evidence chain — the same process real crime scene investigators use to make sure evidence is admissible in court.
A record of every major milestone, from first build to final data collection.
When Ben's dad Ryan was a kid in Utah, his class got a Gulliver's Travels assignment — build something tiny and scale it up. His father Richard, a general contractor, dropped everything. They spent the weekend at the lumber yard, working angles and hexagons on a ten-foot timber. Through a cloud of sawdust emerged a seven-foot-long #2 pencil with a coffee-can eraser.
That pencil may still hang in the lobby of Park City Middle School. M.A.S.S. Trap is the same thing — a dad dropping everything to build something impossible with his kid. Richard did it for Ryan. Ryan built this for Ben. And someday Ben will do it for his own child.
In memory of Richard Massfeller — General Contractor, Formula Vee racer, and the original builder.
The M.A.S.S. Trap uses two ESP32-S3 microcontrollers connected over a radio mesh network (ESP-NOW). When a car breaks the infrared beam at the start gate, a microsecond timestamp is recorded. When it breaks the beam at the finish gate, another timestamp is recorded. The difference is the race time.
The system calculates speed, momentum, and kinetic energy in real-time and broadcasts results to a web dashboard over WiFi. Every measurement is traceable through a case number back to the exact car, weight, condition, and trial.
Open source: All code is available at github.com/Ryan4n6/MASS-Trap
See the dashboard in action — with simulated races and all 5 themes:
LAUNCH INTERACTIVE DEMO →Questions about the experiment? Feedback for Ben? Drop a comment or reaction below — powered by GitHub Discussions.